November 9, 2025 • 66 mins
Listen to Pastor Chris for his weekly sermons and lessons. Enjoy his down-to-earth and experiential style of communicating the Truths of an Eternal Life with Christ, which starts now and continues throughout all eternity.
It is made complete not only by His Sacrificial Act of the Cross but also by the Love, Grace, and mercy He has demonstrated, and serves as the model of how we should treat each other daily!
https://www.talknetworkradio.com/hosts/TNR
It is made complete not only by His Sacrificial Act of the Cross but also by the Love, Grace, and mercy He has demonstrated, and serves as the model of how we should treat each other daily!
https://www.talknetworkradio.com/hosts/TNR
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Well, welcome back to church, and thank you for allowing
me to come back. That's a good thing from my perspective,
and it's awfully good to be with you. So so
it's good to be here. Let me start why. Reading
(00:24):
from First Chronicle sixteen, this is the prayer of David
as he brings the arc to.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Up to Jerusalem.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Sing to the Lord all the earth, proclaim his salvation
day after day, Declare his glory among the nations, his
marvelous deeds among all peoples. For great is the Lord
and most worthy of praise, to be feared above all gods.
For all the gods of the nations are idols. But
the Lord Yahweh, I Am made the heavens.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Amen a man. Well, so we are here today.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
To talk about hardesty and Haiti, or how I say
on my summer vacation, and any tropical paradise.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
And really, in a lot of ways, Haiti is a
tropical paradise.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Except for the pollution, rampant poverty and disease, and who
knows what else going on there. I told someone the
other day, it's like a tropical paradise as run by
the devil.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
But it's quite a place. So the next slide. Let's
see if we can figure out exactly where Haiti is.
It's a Caribbean island.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
And it's right there underneath the blue arrow sticking down
from the top you see Florida and that kind of
bumps toward Cuba. And then off the east end of
Cuba is an island called Hispaniola, which is the next slide.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Yeah, there we are, and half of it is the
Dominican Republican half of it is Haiti. And what happened
was a long time ago. If we yeah, I guess
we can just stay right there.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
The Spanish settled half the island and the French settled
the other half of the island, and then they thought
about it until they decided they were just going to
cut it down the middle.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
And so that's Haiti. That's kind of highlighted in the
here's this thing on. I didn't turn it on. Did
you turn it on?
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Well, let's turn it on might as well.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Right it is running hello, John, Okay. So so that's
Haiti is the part in kind of the brown there.
Porter Prince is marked with the red arrow or the
(03:05):
red circle. And then just west of that is an
area called Leagong and that is what the arrow is
pointing at. Now the next slide, I'm not sure you
can how well you'll be able to see it, So
I'm gonna come over here and point things out. Okay,
(03:26):
we should have a ladder, but we don't.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
What's that laser pointer would be fabulous? Do you have one? A? Nothing?
What best? We are seriously checking here.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
So as we just pointed out right there is Porter
Prince and you see this little river here. I have
no idea what name of the river is, but I
do know that I was living about ten minutes east
of the river, and I was working about five minutes
west of the river.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
So if you ever look.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
At Haiti and look at it on them, if you
find that little river and you go like, hey, I
know somebody that spent a week right around there, and
it was it was a very good week. God was
good to us, and uh good evening. It was a
good week and it was uh it was time well spent.
(04:24):
The next slide is called the event was why were
we there? January twelfth, there was a seven point zero earthquake.
It was centered in Liogon, which is the area that
I just pointed out to you. Two hundred and thirty
thousand people were killed, three hundred thousand were injured, a
million were left homeless, three million were affected one way
(04:45):
or another, and between two hundred and fifty and three
hundred thousand buildings were destroyed. That's a lot of homes,
and that's a lot of places people go to work.
The result is that there was a whole bunch of devastation, rubble,
all sorts of problems. Of picture, there is actually of
the Presidential Palace, which is bigger than our White House,
(05:07):
and you may have seen it on the news.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Big fancy place used to be.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Now it looks like somebody took a wedding cake and
dropped it from about four feet. Well, what do you
do about such a thing? Well, apart from looking at
buildings that are now standing at odd angles, it takes
a worldwide response to try to deal with a problem
(05:33):
of this magnitude. The Red Cross raised over seven million
dollars in one day for this Foreign nations, beginning with
the Dominican Republic right next door, but many other nations
and the United Nations.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Have sent relief. The US Navy runs around in that
area and within.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
The first week they had made three hundred and thirty
six air drops delivering over thirty two thousand gallons of water,
over fifth over half a million bottles of water, over
one hundred thousand meals, and nine thousand pounds of medical
supplies just in that first week as kind of a
(06:16):
first response to it. And so that was your tax
dollars at work. And it's a good cause. We gripe
about paying taxes, but it was not a bad thing.
In addition to that, the Southern Baptists have also become
very active there. Southern Baptists have ninety thousand trained disaster
(06:37):
relief workers across the country.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Now that's a pretty good workforce.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
And you see the picture here of Don Nesbitt, who
is one of our brothers from Mountain Home. And we
have sent volunteers to all sorts of places, including those
that are listed there. As I recall, the guy in
a sling was down in Florida about five years ago,
right a little over five, I guess, as part of
(07:02):
disaster relief ministries.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
And there's the logo there and you can see it
on the back of my T shirt here.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
I did wash this T shirt. It stank badly when
it arrived home.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
H But you can see on the logo that that
it's it's a cross of two things.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
There's the wheat and.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
There is a fish, And the wheat represents taking care
of people's physical needs, and the fish or the ikthus
represent represents sharing Christ to meet their spiritual needs. As
we go through the as we go through the process,
and some of them are very very localized. For example,
we send a team down to the earthquake that was
(07:41):
an Elko a few years ago, and others take place
on a scale that captures the attention of the world.
So I went down with your help to to see
what I could.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Do to help.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
We see a picture of your team and you're like, well, David,
you're the only one of these people that we know.
But this slide to the next slide are nine people
from Utah and Idaho, six from six from Idaho, and
three from Utah. And we all went down together, and
I say, they're your team, because this is your cooperative program.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Money at work.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Every every week we collect offerings and every week we
divvy it up for the offerings for different purposes, and
a portion of that we send to a common pot
called the Cooperative Program. So that Southern Baptists can work
together to do all sorts of things, primarily missions, and
one of the missions that we are interested in is
(08:43):
disaster relief. And so this is your team. Cooperative Funds
paid for half of my airfare, and you know that
was eight hundred bucks, so four hundred dollars right there,
as well as the money that the church donated to
me directly, and so that was good. Now on top
of that, on top of the fact that you gave money,
(09:04):
what else did you give for this team?
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Prayers?
Speaker 1 (09:09):
And it was so good to see so many of
your names on our Facebook prayer list, and I know
the club was sending out people, sending out notifications to people,
and it was so good to know that you were
back here praying for us. In fact, we were told
over the course of the week by someone who has
seen a lot of teams that they had never seen
(09:31):
a team that worked together with as good a spirit
as the nine.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Of us did. And it wasn't just because.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
We're all nice, smiling people, although we may be, but
it was because we were prayed for and God was
working out his kindnesses in our lives. So thank you
very much, very briefly, you've got oh, back the other way,
back the other way.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
There we go.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
We have Bert and Blame and Bob and Bob and
Angie and.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Hold on, I forgot this guy. And we've got Cricket
and Don and Russell and.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Me and I'm actually wearing a yellow shirt, but I
also had my raincoat on. So there, okay, let's keep going.
Enough of these faces. So we went from the USA
to Port of Prince. The first picture, over here you
see the very very luxurious Dallas Sport Worth Airport with
(10:30):
over here there's Corky's Barbecue, and we had like twenty
seven different restaurants we could eat in, every one of
which looked great. And then next to it is the
Porter Prince Airport, which looks like a high school parking
lot pretty much. And when we went in, I went
in and it was kind of like being in a
(10:54):
bus depot. That's about how fancy it was. But that's okay.
We weren't there for the luxury. Rather, we were there
as we left the airport two to work with the Haitians.
This is kind of our first view of Haiti when
we came out of the airport, and you can see
(11:16):
the chaos that's going on here. There is traffic everywhere,
there are people everywhere, enormous amount of people and congestion
going on, and of course with all of that, you
also have.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Buildings that are sort of stacked on top of each other.
And it's hard to.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
See, but some of these buildings are pretty well broken up,
and you have people who are living out here in
the streets and not a joyful experience. Next slide shows
us how two things. One is a up here we
have some government office buildings that are right next to
that presidential palace. And here is the cathedral with the
(12:02):
two towers that go all the way up to here
that aren't there anymore. All there is to it so
very difficult, very difficult situation, and they needed as much
help as they get. The next picture shows a well
it shows a bulldog, but more than that, this is
(12:23):
just a house that got destroyed. And this is a
water truck. And because water has to be delivered because
there is no city water system operating right now. So
as we drove through town, we eventually ended up at
what's called the Florida House.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
And it's called the Florida House.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Because it is owned by the Florida Southern Baptist Convention,
and it is.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
A major staging area.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
It's got room for probably thirty volunteers at one time
in dorm style rooms.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
And so.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
If you ever go overseas and you go to a
to a a guest house, it'll probably look something like this.
It'll have dorm rooms and it'll have kind of like
barracks rooms, and then it'll have some wide open meeting areas.
This is Dale Hanson, who is the incident coordinator. That
means that he's the guy that all the groups coordinate
with and then he goes and coordinates with with other
(13:18):
groups to tie everything together. He's the man in charge
on the ground right now. And so that's sort of
what Florida House look like. You can see that Florida
House is a place that has no cell coverage. And
there we all were, and I suddenly realized I had
about five people in the yard trying to make their
phones work, and I figured I had to take a
(13:41):
picture of it. But that's why my wife got one
call from me all week, because there's you just can't
get it. We keep going and here's a tap tap
a hippiemobile. Thank you very much. It's a this is
happens to be a Nissan, I believe, but this is
(14:03):
a taxi. And what you do is you build a
bench along each side of the of the of the bed,
either cover it or not. In this case this is
a very fancy one. It's actually you've got a luggage
rack up on top, and then you fit in. Oh,
however many people you can fit inside it. And as
your drive along and you are a tap tap driver,
(14:24):
somebody I'll just wave you down and you will stick
as many people in there as you can. And at
the end of their ride, whenever they've gotten where they're going,
they just tap on the back window.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
They stop, they throw some money through, and on you go.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
So on that ride back from the airport we had
we had all nine of us in a tap tap
plus a translator. I was glad that I was a
person sitting on the outside corner right over here, because
it looked pretty hot and sweaty in there. Sure I
could have gotten killed, but that was better. And so
(15:00):
this is the tap tap driver. And in Creole this
says viva the sangha de j z, which we think
means something like victory or life. Life in the Name
of Jesus or Life in the Blood of Jesus.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
So now you know about tap taps.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
You might see a few more pictures we go along,
but yeah, they're wonderfully colored. Next picture shows a picture
of the scene across the street from the from the
Florida House. And this used to be part of the wall.
Now it's actually swung out over the road, hanging on
a piece of rebar right here. That's what earthquakes do.
Here's another picture of it, and it used to be
(15:41):
a very nice house with a very nice wall. You
can even see the the satellite dish over here. And
now it's rubble. Now it's rubble. But we got into
a we got into a school bus and we decided
we would make our way out to Leogan. You may
have seen the name Gressier, and that's where we were
(16:02):
actually sleeping.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Legon is where we were working.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
As we drove along, we drove along the highway or
the city streets, and this is the median of the
street between the two sides. It's about here, it's about
eight feet across, and you can see that this guy
has built a shelter that's about four by eight long.
And there's another one right next to it, about the
(16:25):
same size. These sprang up overnight after the earthquake because
they had to.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Sleep somewhere, and they sure work them to sleep in
the houses.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
We saw some of these that were actually four by
four boxes, but you have to sleep somewhere.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Over the next.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Several weeks, well, we got were ten cities as aid
and resources started coming in. And so there's one picture
of of a tent city. And here's another one. This
is actually out at Lagon, and you can see that
the scenery has changed a little bit. It's not urban
rubble anymore. It's not just broken stuff. But Lagan is
(17:05):
a city of about thirty thousand people and in theory,
about seventy five percent of the buildings were damaged, if
not destroyed, and so this population of this little town
is now living out there.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Here's a picture of us on the bus.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
We had a twenty passenger school bus that took us
around and we spent a lot of time on it
because even though these two places we were actually about
seven miles apart, a little bit more than that, but.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
They were.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
It took at least half an hour to get from
one place to the other. Whenever we got in the bus.
Next picture is one of the Joy House. I told
you that we had a Florida house, and there's not
a state called Joy, but a major SOUTHERNPI in Arkansas.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Have has a couple in it who came down here saw.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
The situation way back in the nineties and said, what
our church ought to do with our nineteen thousand members
is we ought to start a home and we ought
to do something. We have all these kids on the street,
orphans get kicked out orphanages at the age of twelve
and they just live on the street.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
We were going to do is well to.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
See if we can get some of them and move
them into a house, train them, raise off as Christians,
and try to affect life as best we can. And
so they built the Joy House and it's a wonderful
place and a wonderful ministry.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
If you want to check it out.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Their website is Haitijoyhouse dot org and it's well worth
well worth your time.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Looking at this is us. We've arrived.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
We're debriefing or getting ready for our for our week.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
You can see there's six mileah three from Utah.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
And we met eight people who are also staying there
from Florida and Virginia all gonna be working on the
same project.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
And what we found out.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Was that we're gonna be building buildings, we're gonna be
building shelters, and so well, let's put down a hole
from it.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
And this is the gate. This is the gate.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
It's up on the top of the hill and you
can kind of see how steep that hill is.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Right.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
That's we called that bus or that truck the limo
because not only did it carry all of our stuff
to the work site, but also it led us. Well,
it was another way to get transport. And frankly, when
it's that hot, you don't really want to be sitting
in the bus, so you can sit on the back
and let the breeze blow through your hair. You see,
(19:39):
there's a big wall around the place. Every decent home
in Haiti has a wall around it because it's a
it's a dangerous place. But it is a big house
up on a hill. And the nice thing about that is,
since we are in a tropical paradise, it's got a
pretty good view. That's that's that big bay that you
saw in Haiti. Below blue building is tin roof wrapped
(20:04):
in blue tart and that is a church.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Now.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
The cool thing about this church.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Is that the walls are on hinges, and if you
get enough people, what you do is you just raise.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Up the back, and you get more people, you raise
up this side. And so you see that little building.
It's only about six rows deep.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
But they had four hundred people there at Easter. So
that's pretty great.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
And so that is that's the church, and that's that's
a picture of the situation.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
But yeah, it is sort of a tropical paradise.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
This is Joe who runs the place, and our friend
Bert and you can go up on the roof and
see everything, and that's pretty fabulous. Spend a lot of
time up there in the off hours because it was wonderful.
In fact, the next picture shows you, well, you know,
you get these big dramatic tropical sunsets too, and so
it's not the worst place.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Like I said, it is sort of a tropical paradise
in spite of all of his problems. One of the
problems is that it is up on top of the hill.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
And the hill is made of clay, and so you've
got the school bus and you've got the big white
limbo truck and if it rains.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
At all, all that clay just turns slick, and so
you've got to hike up.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
And you can get a pretty good idea of how
steep that is here in the next picture too. But
you got these big toolkits, you know, the two man
kind of toolkits, and you've got you know, five gallon
buckets of water, and all had to be carried up
because you can't leave it.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
On the truck overnight. So anyway, it was steep.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
That's where I got my big workout for the week.
But and we're gonna we're gonna come back to the
idea a little bit later. So the first night I arrived,
I asked if there's a church service we we could
go to. I left Boise.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
I think I got to the airport around six point
thirty on Saturday morning. We flew all Or, we flew
over to Miami.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
We spent the night on the floor in the Miami airport,
so we and then we flew to Port of Prince.
We missed church, and so I asked, is there an
evening service where we're gonna be? And yes, the Little
Blue Church is gonna have an evening service. And I
asked that question about a quarter to five, and I
found out the answer yes. And then about five minutes
(22:34):
later one of the guys came and said, so you
want to preach and I and now I told the Lord, yes,
I want to go and I want to do whatever
you want. But if you give me it, she has
to preach, I'm gonna take it. So I just want
you to know that, Father, And so here I have.
I got five minutes and okay, I'm preaching. And so
(22:57):
one of the other guys from Virginia was is it pastor?
And he looked at me and said, how can I help?
I said, okay, find these verses for me. I don't
know the references. If I don't have a concordance, help me
out here. And so we found the verses, and a
good portion of the sermon dealt with first Chronicles.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Sixteen that I read before that.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
The gods of the nations or idols, but our Lord
made the heavens, which means wherever heaven looks, God is
still God, and no idle or local God can handle it.
But then on top of that, it's not just places,
but it's also people. And so here I am I'm
looking at fifteen people I've never seen before and might
(23:42):
never see it again.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
But we're also in a spiritual kingdom.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
And as some of you already know, Colossian chapter one
has my favorite verses. God has delivered us from the
dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of
the Son he loves, Christ Jesus, in whom we have redemption,
the forgiveness of sins. And so you see, God's kingdom
is not an earthly kingdom that's measured in miles or
(24:08):
area or countrysides, but rather it is measured in the
people who come into His kingdom.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
And so I was able to say to them, it
doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
That I am from the US and you're from Haiti.
Your passport and mine both say Kingdom of the Son
He loves. And so it was great. We had a
good time, great singers collect That sounds a lot like Africa.
It was just a lot of fun and lots of
loud singing and clapping, and people were all smiles afterwards.
(24:40):
Here's a picture of a guy smiling. I think, yeah,
see that guy. He was there, he was smiling, And
that's right next to him is one of our lead translators.
His name is Matthew, and he's been with the joy
House family since he was twelve years old.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
He's in his.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Early twenties, mid twenties now and just a great guy.
And then down below in front of Matthew is the
dogs with barks and demons. Matthew told me he can
see demons and he'll bark at him. And sometime I
will tell you the full story about that, but we
(25:18):
don't have time tonight, although we if we do have.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Time to tell you. Okay, So what we're.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Gonna do is we found out we're gonna build building shelters.
We weren't gonna be just moving rubble. We were gonna
be building shelters. And this is a shelter. The materials
are provided by Samaritan's Purse. And what this is is
basically a tent with a tin roof. It's twelve by twelve,
(25:44):
twelve feet on the side. And what we did was
we built two by four walls.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
On thirty inch centers.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Guys, no three foot centers, thirty six inch centers, so
in the US we'd use sixteen. But these are in
other words, every three foot there is a beam going up,
and that not a lot of snowload, that's right. And
then what you do is put a the front of
(26:14):
its eight feet tall. In the back of it and
the sides are seven feet tall. You put a tin
roof on it and that's enough of a pitch to
let the rain roll off. And then you wrap the
whole thing in a forty eight foot tart and and
nail the tarp to the to the studs. And that
doesn't sound like much, and frankly it's not.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
But it's enough for a family of eight people to
live in.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
And while it sounds like it's not much, we had
people lining up asking when they could get one, so
it's really really quite something. Oh and then we took Rebard,
drove it into the ground, wrapped it over one of
the bottom rails to try to hold it down when
the hurricane season starts, which actually started yesterday. And so
(27:04):
that's what we're gonna be working on.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
And the question for you is how do you do that?
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Well, let's keep going with our slides here. First thing
is you get up early in the morning and you
drive from you drive down to Laogan and Bienvenue.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
We're speaking French and Creole here, so welcome to Leogan.
And you've all been welcomed.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Now, and as you drive along, you're gonna turn off
the highway onto this dirt road, which is one of
the better dirt roads in the on the whole island,
I think, because it's reasonably flat. And you're gonna drive
through this community and you can see all sorts of
great stuff. We're talking banana trees over here, and all
sorts of mango trees, and this tiny little opening suddenly
(27:48):
it opens up into a big open area. And that's
where we did our staging. So slide number forty two. Hey,
look at that. That base is too big and ugly
for this purpose. But here we are, and I rode
in this day on the back of the truck. There's
a goat back here and well, and you can see
this house now uninhabitable.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
This was a two story house and now it's a
one story house.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
The goat was tied to a piece of rebarb I
don't know what the goat did.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
But he was in time out because it was no
food or water.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
Anyway, later on, later on I released him, and you know,
I said, because he was all wrapped up in this
little quarter around his neck and anyway, but that's more
than one to know. So we arrive here and then
we keep going.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
What do we do? Well, we get.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Together on the job site and we have a little
morning meeting. This is Cricket and Blaine Harden and they
are from Blackfoot and two of the hardest working people
you will ever want to meet.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Blaine is about your size.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Pastor, but he outweighs you buy twenty thirty pounds. And
this guy is muscle. He is an ox. And so
we did all sorts of things and he carried the burden.
You ought to be proud to have him in your convention.
So then what you do You unload the truck that's
got the equipment. This is another This is coming over
(29:20):
from Samaritan's Purse. They had a factory just down the
road turning turning wood into beams and into two by
fours and producing tarts and so then they sent this
over and so we unloaded. And this guy here, oh no,
that guy there is Russell Perry.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
He's from the church up in Cascade, phil Cross Church.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
And he's going to be sixty eight years old next month,
and he outworked everybody on the team.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
So there you go.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
So you unload everything, and then what do you do
in the next slide? You smile a little kids like Bico,
and then you a foundation of some sort.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
You try to level out the ground. You use the rubble.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
And you make things even and you turn it into
a foundation, or you break up pillars from the building
and try to get them out of the way and
so you can build something on top of it. Now,
I had them take this picture of me because I
wanted you to know for sure that I had done
(30:27):
something involving physical work while I was down there. This
is don Nez, but he's kind of laughing at me.
I'm not sure why. But no, no, it wasn't. It wasn't.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
I did this like all day or at least. Yeah,
that's right, we're apposed to be working on this pillar. No, actually,
this this was actually.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
At a church, at the Baptist Church, and the title
of it was the Church of the Great King was
the name of the church, which is.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
A great name of a church. Huh.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
But there are walls are all falling down except for
the ones over on this side over here, and so
they wanted us to break up the rubble and so
they'd be able to pour a new floor and start
building something new. Now they're meeting under a tent or
a tarp actually that they tie to the one wall
that's standing in the.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Two little pieces of the wall they're still there.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
In fact, they told us that there were two columns
there were only half broken, and they.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Told us to leave them up so they could keep
tying things.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
To them and they could keep having church under the
tarp on Sunday because it gets pretty hot.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
We keep going.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
So what do you do after you've made a foundation.
You measure up wood, You make sure you're gonna put
your your nails in the right place, and then you
start nailing these things toged. Like I said, they're in
thirty six foot centers. So whether it's a seven foot
wall or eighth foot wall, you've got a beam here,
(32:02):
and then three beams that are set three feet apart,
and then you've got another beam here.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Five studs make up a troll foot wall.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
And those of you who are into construction are just
sort of grimacing right now. But this isn't designed to
be permanent shelter, but it's designed to be something that
will get them through the next year or two. Then
you stand these things up, put little gussets in the
walls here to hold them together, to threw them up
(32:32):
a little bit, and then you start then you start
hammering them and they go together. This guy uh this
next picture, Yeah, that's what I did. I held up walls.
And there's Russell again. You can see he's kicking something
around me. I'm holding up a wall.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Oh well, in fact, laughing and laughing. That's right.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
One day I was carrying one of these walls, because
you can't always build them where you're gonna set them up.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
You don't have room.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
So you have to build the wall and carry it
to wherever your site was gonna be. So I'm cruising
along and and one of the guys, one of the
the local guys behind me, asked, are you a pastor?
And I said yes and uh, and he said something
that to the other guys, and they all started laughing.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
And I'm not sure why, but I think it's good.
I think they were thinking this skinny guy is uh, Yeah,
he must.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Be a pastor, because he's not good for much. Here's
a view looking up. This guy is uh is standing
on the roof. He's getting ready to put some roofing on.
Just several several sheets of ten. Here's another view of it.
You get to see the bottom of his legs. But
these are bunk beds.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
And there's kind of a practical genius here.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
This is a piece of wood that is two feet
wide and twelve feet long. That's really enough bed for
two six foot people, right, and so right here we've
got bunks for six people. Plus you've got a ladder
that'll lets you get up on the roof. So an
(34:20):
incredibly simple but very well conceived design. There was also
a each house got a four by six bed, one
bed that a married couple could sleep in. But so
you've got your whole family of eight here in a
twelve x twelve room. Next slide shows us how it
looks when it's done, how it looks when it's half done,
(34:42):
and how it looks when it's still kind of in
the building process.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
That's three houses.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Together in a space that was twelve thirteen, fourteen, another twelve,
another two, and another twelve.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
So what does that come through thirty six that comes
to forty feet three.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Yeah, every one of them had a dirt floor. Every
one of them was tied into the dirt to protect
against hurricanes, and every one of them was spoken for
before we even started building. If you ever think that
you don't have enough stuff, just remember this picture.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Sometimes sometimes a tent with a tin roof is luxury.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
I don't know if any of you give to Samaritans first, Well,
I know the lots of us do at Christmas time
for Operation Christmas Shoebox the shoebox, but they're not just
a Christmas time thing they appreciate. In fact, I asked
them whether they had gotten shoe box.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Oh, yeah, we get shoeboxes. Well, well, we send shoe boxes.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
But one of our guys who was kind of leading
the team is a construction guy from Jacksonville, Florida. He's
got his own company, and he says that he figured
the materials cost four to six hundred dollars for each
one of these if you bought them in the States.
That's not a whole lot for a house, but it's
(36:17):
a whole lot of house if you've got nothing.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
That wasn't all we did.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Here's Angie Polland she's from little town east of Twin Falls.
She's a registered nurses, so she went to.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Be our team medic.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
She also ended up doing a lot of things for
the for the locals. But when they found out that
she had band aids. You know, kids are with band aids, right,
except these kids had genuine wounds from.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
We We could never really figure out why.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
And so she was putting on a lot of anti
vacterial ointment and doing some serious that we wouldn't normally
think of. In fact, one afternoon, I got sick, a
little heat sick, and I just sat there with her,
and I was her nurse.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
And she would sit there, she look.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
At a wound or a condition and make some kind
of diagnosis, and and I'd hand her a gaze pad
or some tape or something, and she would dress the wound.
And she had as much business as she could handle.
We saw a chicken pox epidemic over there.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
We saw.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
All sorts of cuts and scrapes and everything completely uncared
for no soap.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Even if you have soap, the water is well, you're
not going.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
To drink it. Weird head skin disease thing. We didn't
even recognize.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
What it was. A boil. You know what a boil is.
It's like the world's largest z it.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
And I got to help lands one.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Let's hear it from being heat sick. But one thing
Angie did was she.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Brought bags of beads and she made bracelets for the kids.
How many of you know about the gospel bracelets? Everybody
here know what a gospel bracelet is. Oh, some people don't.
A gospel bracelet is. One of the most powerful things
in the world, is what a gospel bracelet is.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
So look up there you see the ones on the end.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Are black and gold, and this represents the condition of
the universe. God is holy and mighty, and his majesty
is represented by the goal on the other end, all
the way separated, it's black, and that represents the condition
of humans. We are in sin, and the Bible says
(38:49):
that our hearts are black, and they're turned away from
Him and they are dirty, and we are separated from
Him by our sin.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
But God is not satisfied with that condition.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
He loves us, and so he gave his own son,
Jesus Christ, who died on the cross, and his red
blood covers our sin. He is He is a sacrifice
to take away the sin of the world, and everyone
who trusts him can have his black sin washed away
(39:22):
and made as white as snow. Now these people don't
have a concept of snow like we do. But they
know what snow looks like and they followed that. And
you can be washed as white as snow by the
blood of Jesus. It doesn't matter how dark your heart is.
You can be forgiven and cleaned. Then you're baptized, you
become part of the church, and you begin living with
(39:45):
the nation of believers.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
Like we talked about before, over time you're going to grow.
You're going to become more and more like Jesus.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
You're never going to become the Son of God, but
your character and your attitude and your life you're going
to become like Jesus as you grow.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
And eventually you're going to die. And we're all going
to die.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
And I don't need to tell any of you that,
especially if you're a bunch of patients who just saw
close to three hundred thousand people killed.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
We're all going to die.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
But when we die, we're going to be gloried with God.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
And that's a gospel bracelet.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
So she made these on Monday, and in fact, in
the next few pictures, I think, if I'm not mistaken, Yeah,
this little girl doesn't look too impressed, and neither one
of them, but you can see they got those bracelets right.
The next kids they are kind of impressed and they've
got their bracelets on.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
And so that was. That was on Monday.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
And on Tuesday I had a bracelet too.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
And on Tuesday I walked from one job site to another.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
We were actually doing things in a couple of little
family neighborhoods and I finished my job here and I
went over here and what should happen?
Speaker 2 (41:03):
But I'm just standing there, and Anna, who is from Virginia, says, Hi, Pastor,
you got a crowd. You're gonna preach? And I looked around.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
Hi, there were about fifteen people just standing around, and
I said, yeah, I guess I am.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
And so I just I just.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Took the little bracelet I was wearing and walked through
the presentation just like I told you.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
Sure, I preached it a little bit more, but that
was pretty much it.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
And at the end, I said, now, if you don't
if you don't know Jesus personally, if you would like
to experience what I've just talked about, just.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
Raise your hand and we'll go and talk about some more.
And two people raise their hand, and so.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
I took them off to the side with a translator
and went through it again make sure they understood the gospel.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
They did. I prayed with them.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
Then I took them down the road and introduced them
to the local pastor.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
And so that was a very very exciting moment. And
we turned around and.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
It was getting close to wrap up time, and so
we started, or I started back down the road and
heading for the truck. And that night I was told
that when we finished, and when we walked away, another
of the women who had been there went.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
Up to the pastor and said, I want to be
saved all from a little colored bracelet.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
So I imagine at some point those bracelets have been
made in a.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
Vacation Bible school sponsored by this church.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
Never underestimate the power of twenty five cents worth.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Of these in the hands of God. So now that
was on Tuesday.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
On Monday, another guy had been led to the Lord,
kind of a guy who's about twenty and the guy
had used an avanjacube. Does everybody here know what an
evangecube is. I'm going to be preaching for pastor in
a couple of weeks. I have a suspicion I'll show
you in a van cube then, But basically it looks
like a Rubik's cube, but as you move the pieces.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
Around and tells the gospel story.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
And this other pastor from Virginia had done that, and
he had led this.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Guy named Nelson's the Lord.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
And that was on Monday, and then I had done
my presentation on Tuesday. On Wednesday, a guy brings me
in a vancube and I show it, and no reaction
at all, nobody's interested. But then even as that crowd
has just starting to disperse, Nelson shows up and he's
got a hold of in a vanjcube, and with him
(43:37):
he's dragging his friend Franz, which is.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
Of course, you know, a good Haitian name Franz. Franz
a big guy.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
And Nelson tells me passa davy, show my friend. And
I tell him, no, you show your friend so I
can't do it.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
I tell it, I'll move it.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
You tell him, so I opened it, showed the first scene,
Nelson tells Franz. Second scene. Nelson tells trans Thursday, we
go all the way through it. And then I say
to Franz, do you want to accept Christ? He says yes, great,
big serious guy, yes, And so again I talked him
(44:26):
through make sure he understood what he was doing.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
We prayed together, and Franz was never again on the
work side. He's a working guy.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
He's he's actually rides a motorcycle.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
At the taxi driver. How many people can you fit
onto a motorcycle, that's a question. I've seen five.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
But but whenever I would see him passing, driving by
or whatever, I said, Hey, Bronz, and he give me
the biggest smile. This this guy, this guy's demeanor changed
when he came from No Christ. And so there were
these five people that came to the Lord that we
know of, very directly through the ministry that you guys
(45:13):
sent down. And there were reports of Nelson taking as
the banjeque and then showing whoever he could show it.
So we don't know what kind of ritual that started.
And so so it was great and God is good,
and we are we're praising the Lord for that, we
really are. Now. Before I went down, somebody said, Haiti,
(45:34):
isn't that the voodoo place? And the answer is yes,
So what about voodoo? Have you ever heard of voodoo?
Voodoo is basically African religion. In the seventeenth century, the
French ruled the island, and they brought slaves over from
Africa to rule the or to Uh to work the plantations,
(45:55):
and they brought with them their African Spiritists religion where
they are afraid of demons and they placate the demons
and they.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
Worshiped the spirits. Now to that, of course, the French
were Catholic and that was the official religion.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
And so what they did they kind of kept this
African religion and then they put this veneer of Catholicism
on top of it. So they're very big on Mary,
and they'll have a cross and things. But it's African.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
Religion with Christian pictures more or less.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
So one day we went we visited a voodoo temple
that had been destroyed in the earthquake.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
You're not supposed to take pictures of these things.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
You can because if I take your picture, I can
control your spirit.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
But hey, it's all ruined. There was nobody there. I
took a picture inside it.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
You'll see paintings on the walls that, gee, there's a
cross there. Well, it's actually more like a grave, and
it's got a snake on it. And you got the crossbones,
and look, you've got cards because they tell fortunes.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
With cards, and this is in their.
Speaker 1 (47:19):
Their worship center in effect, and each of the walls
had a different picture painted on it.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
This one that I also have another.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
One of kind of a mermaid holding a knife and
fighting a sea serpent.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
It looks like that they're very big on snakes. Next picture.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
I don't know if you can tell what I've got here,
but basically it's a tree and then you can see this.
Speaker 2 (47:44):
What's this horns? Yeah. One thing that you do in
Haiti is you can actually.
Speaker 1 (47:53):
Pronounce a curse on someone. Or in Vudu, and you
can pronounce a curse and then what you do is
you slaughter an animal and you bind its horns to
the tree, and in doing so, you are figuratively binding.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
The curse on the person that you have just cursed.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
And it's a dark and scary thing. And so I thought, well,
what is what's the difference between Christianity and and voodoo. Oh,
we use the same word. Bunju is the name for God.
(48:34):
It's kind of a corruption of French. It means the
good Lord or the good God balm jew. But we
run against Bunju. Well, in Christianity, he is our father.
In Voodoo, he is an impersonal creator who just sort
of represents the universe. In Christianity, we know Christ is
our savior. They have no concept. Instead, they are worried
(49:00):
about the loa, the spirits who are to.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
Be contacted and appeased.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
You make sacrifices to them, and you pray to them,
and you honor them in these ceremonies.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
We know that the Holy Spirit dwells in us. That's
the promise of God.
Speaker 1 (49:15):
The LaaS possess those who believe in voodoo, and they
aspire to demon possession.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
God desires to save us. The Laa's help were deceived
depending on what they want to do, depending on whether
they are appeased or offended.
Speaker 1 (49:36):
God's plan for us is that we should do good,
and that's that's what the Bible said. We are created
for good works in Christ Jesus, what God has prepared
and advanced for us to do. In Voodoo, believers are
to be generous in their community, but they also cast
spells and they angle for power and and a lot
(49:59):
of the power the voodoo priestess is whether or not
she can manipulate the spirits, whether she can cause harm
to come on you.
Speaker 2 (50:12):
If she can, then she's powerful. If she can't, then
she's not that powerful.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
After the earthquake, there was a little voodoo place down
the hill from the from the Joy House, and the
priestess became a believer and they in the course of
the conversation, she said, the evil spirits just aren't here anymore.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
I can't contact him, and she turned to Christ.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
And that was our prayer through the course of the
through the course of the week.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
There was a full moon last week. I don't know
if you noticed it. It was okay here probably.
Speaker 1 (50:55):
I got the great, big, fat tropical coming up over
the mountains, full moon, and it was great. But full
moontime is the height of the voodoo religion. And our
prayer that night we were up on the roof there.
We were looking at how beautiful it was, but knowing
how dark it was.
Speaker 2 (51:15):
And our prayer that night was that whoever was in
those little voodoo.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
Temples around us, we look around at midnight at the
peak of the powers and.
Speaker 2 (51:23):
Just say, man, there's nothing going on here. Where's all
the power? Tonight? They'd wake up tomorrow morning saying that's
a waste of time.
Speaker 1 (51:34):
And we had a great prayer time. I'll tell you
about it sometime, not tonight. But this is the difference.
Voodoo is a dark and scary religion, and it's about
spirits and who's in power. But God has not given
(51:54):
us the spirit of fear, but of power and love
and self control.
Speaker 2 (52:00):
Amen. It's a whole different thing. So as we go
on down, what do we see.
Speaker 1 (52:07):
Christianity is a religion of grace, it's it's it's a
religion of smiles.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
It's a religion of people working together.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
It's it's a it's a religion of people traveling three
thousand miles to wear bright yellow shirts and sweat their
everything out and uh and do it joyfully. Why well,
because God placed us there, and we had a saying
on the team, right here, right now, where do you
(52:36):
want to be?
Speaker 2 (52:37):
Right here? Right now? This is the place God's calling
me to be.
Speaker 1 (52:41):
And and if one person on the team said right here,
everybody else come back and say, right now, this is
where God.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
Wants us to be. Here, we are, and we are.
Speaker 1 (52:50):
Here's Angie hugging on a little girl she made a
bracelet for over there. That's that's Dale, the incident commander
from Kentucky.
Speaker 2 (52:59):
Translator. Over on side, there's me looking kind of worse
for wear.
Speaker 1 (53:03):
The guy in the yellow shirt, the light yellow shirt,
is the translator. Then the guy in the in the
red shirt is a pastor and a real nice guy.
I only knew him for about five minutes, a real
nice guy. And let's go to the next slide. Well,
this is his church. You can see that at one
(53:24):
time it had a pretty nice foundation. Here in the earthquake,
it all fell down.
Speaker 2 (53:31):
He had a school going and it fell down all
there was.
Speaker 1 (53:38):
To it, and the church cleaned off the slab. Somehow
got a hold of a tent and said schools in session,
churches in session. There are two hundred and six kids
at this school now they're the ones you see. And
(53:58):
then over here on the side there's a there's a
building that didn't fall down, and there are three classrooms
of older kids there. But as I was talking to
this guy, I couldn't help but wondering if my church
was if my building was completely destroyed in a earthquake
and I lost everything, how soon.
Speaker 2 (54:17):
Would I be back in the ministry. How soon would
it take me to do that? You see this is
and you know what I decided, I decided I'd get back.
Speaker 1 (54:26):
On it because Christ gives us the power to do it.
Speaker 2 (54:33):
And He isn't just doing this because he's got to
do something. It's because in Christ we take care of people.
And that's the difference between Christianity and voodoo. Voodoo is
about taking care of your own.
Speaker 1 (54:49):
Christianity says God took care of me, and I'm gonna
take care of you too.
Speaker 2 (54:55):
So this guy here was.
Speaker 1 (54:59):
The paid triarch of this little village of six or
seven little families, his kids and their kids.
Speaker 2 (55:08):
And why do we go well, Because after.
Speaker 1 (55:14):
A ten day trip, we had built twenty homes enough
to house two hundred and forty people, keep him out
of the hurricanes.
Speaker 2 (55:25):
And we had given guys like this guy the chance
of new life, not just.
Speaker 1 (55:30):
New physical life, but new spiritual life. And it was good,
It was really good. I don't know his name, but
it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. We ministered to him.
As you know, we chose this is our theme for
(55:51):
the week. We were down for nine days. There are
nine fruit of the spirit, and.
Speaker 2 (55:58):
Each day we worked our way through.
Speaker 1 (56:02):
Today God is telling us and enabling us to love
each other. Today God is telling us, enabling us to
be joyful with each other and love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,
and self control. Each day we worked through those things
and we prayed them together, and back here in the
(56:22):
States and in Hong Kong and in England.
Speaker 2 (56:26):
People were praying that we would have.
Speaker 1 (56:28):
Those things and God did great things. So again, I
want to thank you for letting me go, for helping
me go and would have it wouldn't have been the
same experience without you backing me up, and knowing that
you were here backing me up made it that much
easier for me to go and be there serving for you.
Speaker 2 (56:52):
So thanks, appreciate it. Now I've talked for an hour.
Speaker 1 (56:59):
Do you have any questions anything that you'd like more
information about.
Speaker 2 (57:05):
How hot was it?
Speaker 1 (57:08):
You know, on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, everybody was telling us, oh,
the weather is so lovely, thank you for bringing with you.
And it was overcast and there was a cool front end.
And on Wednesday, by noon I had heat stroke or
heat whatever it was.
Speaker 2 (57:30):
It was that hot.
Speaker 1 (57:32):
It was so hot that when it started raining, we
didn't worry about trying to get out of the rain.
We just kept working in it and letting ourselves get cooled.
Speaker 2 (57:40):
Down a little bit.
Speaker 1 (57:43):
I'll tell you what, after you've worked all day, sweating
and getting rained on in the dirt, and you come
back to the house smelling like a camel. But it
was hot. It was hot, and there were bugs and
bites and all sorts of things. But God was good
to us, and nobody fell apart.
Speaker 2 (58:05):
Did you eat anything? Did I eat anything unidentifiable?
Speaker 1 (58:11):
No?
Speaker 2 (58:12):
I didn't know what it was, but other people did.
Speaker 1 (58:14):
Every morning we had for breakfast scrambled and now there's
seventeen of us, so it's a pretty big container. We
had scrambled eggs with spam.
Speaker 2 (58:26):
It was a.
Speaker 1 (58:27):
Scrambled egg spam omelet. I guess they had covered with
some velveta.
Speaker 2 (58:38):
And Lord bless them.
Speaker 1 (58:39):
I know those cooks were doing their best, but it
wasn't very good.
Speaker 2 (58:44):
But at night we had all sorts of.
Speaker 1 (58:46):
Good stuff, and we had we had chicken, and we
had black beans and rice, and we had spaghetti with
hot dogs in it. But oh yes, And and we
had our choice of fruit every day. That was mango
(59:06):
or pineapple, or watermelon or bananas. And it was all good.
If you like fruit. That would be a very good
place for you to go, minister.
Speaker 2 (59:16):
And yeah that was of course, I had a cliff
bar for lunch every day. But you know that's not
so bad. What else, how do you get do you just?
(59:37):
How do you get involved in disastery? How did you?
Speaker 1 (59:42):
You know?
Speaker 3 (59:42):
What?
Speaker 2 (59:43):
Our what's that? That's right? Our our convention sponsors.
Speaker 4 (59:52):
Teams and and every couple of months they'll send out
an email there's gonna be a training session and if
you'd like to get involved, you just have to order
the training session.
Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
You just you just volunteered to do it.
Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
And in fact, the weekend before I went and I
drove back to Idaho Falls for a training session because
my certificate had lapsed, of course, but it was if
you want to go, there's some basic things you need
to know.
Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
But then you're on your way.
Speaker 1 (01:00:26):
Yeah, what's the industry there? We couldn't figure it out.
Although they move a lot of sugarcane, and girls, fresh sugarcane.
Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
Is really good. Boys, it's good.
Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
It's like eating candy on a steak. Yeah, really good.
But other than that, there really wasn't a whole lot
of industry that we saw in.
Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
This little village.
Speaker 1 (01:00:51):
This you know, you could see that I was working
in the banana trees and under the mango trees, and
people seem to be eating a lot of those people.
Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
People will raise chickens or.
Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
Pigs or goats, but it's very much kind of a
subsistence level work right there, kind of like going out
your house, get some chickens, and.
Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
Is it work to support that?
Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
People go to work as motorcycle taxi drivers and we
did see five people on a motorcycle one day, and
now admittedly two of them were pretty small, but.
Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
I've never tried it. So is Sarah's a lot of
starting to come back and they can support them, so
overs it's still a lot of just relief.
Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
It Well, Southern Baptists have this program called Buckets of Hope,
five gallon bucket that you can put, you know, a
particular list of food in and and ship it down there.
(01:02:03):
And there are hundreds of thousands of these buckets piled
up on the on the docks because the.
Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
Government has not seen fit to let it in. Very corrupt.
Speaker 1 (01:02:12):
From what we hear, nobody will actually sign a paper
unless they get paid to do it. And I guess
no one has found the right person or is willing
to bribe the right person to sign it.
Speaker 2 (01:02:25):
And so really they're still pretty much living on their own.
Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
They're eating their mangoes and bananas, and that might not
be true everywhere.
Speaker 2 (01:02:34):
But it's true right there. M kind of short, yeah,
and you know, and we could be wrong. Maybe it's
just they're being quarantined.
Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
Until they're sure they're no bugs coming into the country
or something, but that that seems to be the local
popular idea, that that they're never going to see the
food until somebody pays a bribe.
Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
Get said about the Samarians.
Speaker 3 (01:03:02):
First, one of the things you can is Southern Battis
we do the relief work right across them.
Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
Would tell you that they can't.
Speaker 3 (01:03:11):
Function about Southern Baptists because they we provide the workers
and the vehicles can do all the food.
Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
And then but Samarians first, if you want to give
to that, we get a.
Speaker 3 (01:03:23):
Christmas catalog and you can buy we want by boards
this year and so, and.
Speaker 2 (01:03:31):
That helps them. They'll they'll send them wherever they're gonna go,
and that gives them a job.
Speaker 3 (01:03:36):
They can sell the the bee the b boards and
and so b board helps produce the bees and then
they sell.
Speaker 2 (01:03:43):
That that's how they make a living. Or you can
buy gold's change.
Speaker 3 (01:03:46):
There's a lot of things you can do through Samaritans first,
because they get into places that you know, our stuff
might got to die. But the Samaritan's person does have
the capability of getting into places we might not.
Speaker 4 (01:03:59):
So there are a.
Speaker 2 (01:03:59):
Lot pass you through that and Haiti they have a
factory that turns out these things.
Speaker 3 (01:04:08):
So but if you want to spare it, the first
website you could buy probably buy boards or tart or.
Speaker 2 (01:04:16):
It's incredible things that I do to help you.
Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
You know, you might not have six hundred dollars to
buy a house. I like, yeah, but but any person
here could buy a wall or a tart or, and
we as a church certainly could.
Speaker 2 (01:04:36):
That wouldn't be much for a problem. Well I'm not.
Speaker 1 (01:04:47):
I mean, I'm going to be around off and on,
but I would love to talk to you if you
have questions about it. It was quite an experience move.
But let me dis close with this thought. Okay, there
is not a guy in this room that could not
go down and build these houses. We weren't using any
(01:05:11):
special skills that that we don't use at work day
at University of Baptist Church. Somebody's got to hold the wall,
(01:05:32):
and and that that's not just for the guys, it's
for the ladies to If we wanted to take a
week off and go down there together, it's like you know,
UBC mission trip. We could do it and and you
guys could do exactly what I did all week, and
you could have all the blessings I had if you're
(01:05:53):
working in the the power and the calling of the Lord.
So don't think that this is about some great mystical thing.
It's about willingness to go and listen to the voice
of God. So blessings on each one of you.
Speaker 2 (01:06:12):
Pastor
Well, welcome back to church, and thank you for allowing
me to come back. That's a good thing from my perspective,
and it's awfully good to be with you. So so
it's good to be here. Let me start why. Reading
(00:24):
from First Chronicle sixteen, this is the prayer of David
as he brings the arc to.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Up to Jerusalem.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Sing to the Lord all the earth, proclaim his salvation
day after day, Declare his glory among the nations, his
marvelous deeds among all peoples. For great is the Lord
and most worthy of praise, to be feared above all gods.
For all the gods of the nations are idols. But
the Lord Yahweh, I Am made the heavens.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Amen a man. Well, so we are here today.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
To talk about hardesty and Haiti, or how I say
on my summer vacation, and any tropical paradise.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
And really, in a lot of ways, Haiti is a
tropical paradise.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Except for the pollution, rampant poverty and disease, and who
knows what else going on there. I told someone the
other day, it's like a tropical paradise as run by
the devil.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
But it's quite a place. So the next slide. Let's
see if we can figure out exactly where Haiti is.
It's a Caribbean island.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
And it's right there underneath the blue arrow sticking down
from the top you see Florida and that kind of
bumps toward Cuba. And then off the east end of
Cuba is an island called Hispaniola, which is the next slide.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Yeah, there we are, and half of it is the
Dominican Republican half of it is Haiti. And what happened
was a long time ago. If we yeah, I guess
we can just stay right there.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
The Spanish settled half the island and the French settled
the other half of the island, and then they thought
about it until they decided they were just going to
cut it down the middle.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
And so that's Haiti. That's kind of highlighted in the
here's this thing on. I didn't turn it on. Did
you turn it on?
Speaker 3 (02:39):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Well, let's turn it on might as well.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Right it is running hello, John, Okay. So so that's
Haiti is the part in kind of the brown there.
Porter Prince is marked with the red arrow or the
(03:05):
red circle. And then just west of that is an
area called Leagong and that is what the arrow is
pointing at. Now the next slide, I'm not sure you
can how well you'll be able to see it, So
I'm gonna come over here and point things out. Okay,
(03:26):
we should have a ladder, but we don't.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
What's that laser pointer would be fabulous? Do you have one? A? Nothing?
What best? We are seriously checking here.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
So as we just pointed out right there is Porter
Prince and you see this little river here. I have
no idea what name of the river is, but I
do know that I was living about ten minutes east
of the river, and I was working about five minutes
west of the river.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
So if you ever look.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
At Haiti and look at it on them, if you
find that little river and you go like, hey, I
know somebody that spent a week right around there, and
it was it was a very good week. God was
good to us, and uh good evening. It was a
good week and it was uh it was time well spent.
(04:24):
The next slide is called the event was why were
we there? January twelfth, there was a seven point zero earthquake.
It was centered in Liogon, which is the area that
I just pointed out to you. Two hundred and thirty
thousand people were killed, three hundred thousand were injured, a
million were left homeless, three million were affected one way
(04:45):
or another, and between two hundred and fifty and three
hundred thousand buildings were destroyed. That's a lot of homes,
and that's a lot of places people go to work.
The result is that there was a whole bunch of devastation, rubble,
all sorts of problems. Of picture, there is actually of
the Presidential Palace, which is bigger than our White House,
(05:07):
and you may have seen it on the news.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Big fancy place used to be.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Now it looks like somebody took a wedding cake and
dropped it from about four feet. Well, what do you
do about such a thing? Well, apart from looking at
buildings that are now standing at odd angles, it takes
a worldwide response to try to deal with a problem
(05:33):
of this magnitude. The Red Cross raised over seven million
dollars in one day for this Foreign nations, beginning with
the Dominican Republic right next door, but many other nations
and the United Nations.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Have sent relief. The US Navy runs around in that
area and within.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
The first week they had made three hundred and thirty
six air drops delivering over thirty two thousand gallons of water,
over fifth over half a million bottles of water, over
one hundred thousand meals, and nine thousand pounds of medical
supplies just in that first week as kind of a
(06:16):
first response to it. And so that was your tax
dollars at work. And it's a good cause. We gripe
about paying taxes, but it was not a bad thing.
In addition to that, the Southern Baptists have also become
very active there. Southern Baptists have ninety thousand trained disaster
(06:37):
relief workers across the country.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Now that's a pretty good workforce.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
And you see the picture here of Don Nesbitt, who
is one of our brothers from Mountain Home. And we
have sent volunteers to all sorts of places, including those
that are listed there. As I recall, the guy in
a sling was down in Florida about five years ago,
right a little over five, I guess, as part of
(07:02):
disaster relief ministries.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
And there's the logo there and you can see it
on the back of my T shirt here.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
I did wash this T shirt. It stank badly when
it arrived home.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
H But you can see on the logo that that
it's it's a cross of two things.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
There's the wheat and.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
There is a fish, And the wheat represents taking care
of people's physical needs, and the fish or the ikthus
represent represents sharing Christ to meet their spiritual needs. As
we go through the as we go through the process,
and some of them are very very localized. For example,
we send a team down to the earthquake that was
(07:41):
an Elko a few years ago, and others take place
on a scale that captures the attention of the world.
So I went down with your help to to see
what I could.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Do to help.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
We see a picture of your team and you're like, well, David,
you're the only one of these people that we know.
But this slide to the next slide are nine people
from Utah and Idaho, six from six from Idaho, and
three from Utah. And we all went down together, and
I say, they're your team, because this is your cooperative program.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Money at work.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Every every week we collect offerings and every week we
divvy it up for the offerings for different purposes, and
a portion of that we send to a common pot
called the Cooperative Program. So that Southern Baptists can work
together to do all sorts of things, primarily missions, and
one of the missions that we are interested in is
(08:43):
disaster relief. And so this is your team. Cooperative Funds
paid for half of my airfare, and you know that
was eight hundred bucks, so four hundred dollars right there,
as well as the money that the church donated to
me directly, and so that was good. Now on top
of that, on top of the fact that you gave money,
(09:04):
what else did you give for this team?
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Prayers?
Speaker 1 (09:09):
And it was so good to see so many of
your names on our Facebook prayer list, and I know
the club was sending out people, sending out notifications to people,
and it was so good to know that you were
back here praying for us. In fact, we were told
over the course of the week by someone who has
seen a lot of teams that they had never seen
(09:31):
a team that worked together with as good a spirit
as the nine.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Of us did. And it wasn't just because.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
We're all nice, smiling people, although we may be, but
it was because we were prayed for and God was
working out his kindnesses in our lives. So thank you
very much, very briefly, you've got oh, back the other way,
back the other way.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
There we go.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
We have Bert and Blame and Bob and Bob and
Angie and.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Hold on, I forgot this guy. And we've got Cricket
and Don and Russell and.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Me and I'm actually wearing a yellow shirt, but I
also had my raincoat on. So there, okay, let's keep going.
Enough of these faces. So we went from the USA
to Port of Prince. The first picture, over here you
see the very very luxurious Dallas Sport Worth Airport with
(10:30):
over here there's Corky's Barbecue, and we had like twenty
seven different restaurants we could eat in, every one of
which looked great. And then next to it is the
Porter Prince Airport, which looks like a high school parking
lot pretty much. And when we went in, I went
in and it was kind of like being in a
(10:54):
bus depot. That's about how fancy it was. But that's okay.
We weren't there for the luxury. Rather, we were there
as we left the airport two to work with the Haitians.
This is kind of our first view of Haiti when
we came out of the airport, and you can see
(11:16):
the chaos that's going on here. There is traffic everywhere,
there are people everywhere, enormous amount of people and congestion
going on, and of course with all of that, you
also have.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Buildings that are sort of stacked on top of each other.
And it's hard to.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
See, but some of these buildings are pretty well broken up,
and you have people who are living out here in
the streets and not a joyful experience. Next slide shows
us how two things. One is a up here we
have some government office buildings that are right next to
that presidential palace. And here is the cathedral with the
(12:02):
two towers that go all the way up to here
that aren't there anymore. All there is to it so
very difficult, very difficult situation, and they needed as much
help as they get. The next picture shows a well
it shows a bulldog, but more than that, this is
(12:23):
just a house that got destroyed. And this is a
water truck. And because water has to be delivered because
there is no city water system operating right now. So
as we drove through town, we eventually ended up at
what's called the Florida House.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
And it's called the Florida House.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Because it is owned by the Florida Southern Baptist Convention,
and it is.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
A major staging area.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
It's got room for probably thirty volunteers at one time
in dorm style rooms.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
And so.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
If you ever go overseas and you go to a
to a a guest house, it'll probably look something like this.
It'll have dorm rooms and it'll have kind of like
barracks rooms, and then it'll have some wide open meeting areas.
This is Dale Hanson, who is the incident coordinator. That
means that he's the guy that all the groups coordinate
with and then he goes and coordinates with with other
(13:18):
groups to tie everything together. He's the man in charge
on the ground right now. And so that's sort of
what Florida House look like. You can see that Florida
House is a place that has no cell coverage. And
there we all were, and I suddenly realized I had
about five people in the yard trying to make their
phones work, and I figured I had to take a
(13:41):
picture of it. But that's why my wife got one
call from me all week, because there's you just can't
get it. We keep going and here's a tap tap
a hippiemobile. Thank you very much. It's a this is
happens to be a Nissan, I believe, but this is
(14:03):
a taxi. And what you do is you build a
bench along each side of the of the of the bed,
either cover it or not. In this case this is
a very fancy one. It's actually you've got a luggage
rack up on top, and then you fit in. Oh,
however many people you can fit inside it. And as
your drive along and you are a tap tap driver,
(14:24):
somebody I'll just wave you down and you will stick
as many people in there as you can. And at
the end of their ride, whenever they've gotten where they're going,
they just tap on the back window.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
They stop, they throw some money through, and on you go.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
So on that ride back from the airport we had
we had all nine of us in a tap tap
plus a translator. I was glad that I was a
person sitting on the outside corner right over here, because
it looked pretty hot and sweaty in there. Sure I
could have gotten killed, but that was better. And so
(15:00):
this is the tap tap driver. And in Creole this
says viva the sangha de j z, which we think
means something like victory or life. Life in the Name
of Jesus or Life in the Blood of Jesus.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
So now you know about tap taps.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
You might see a few more pictures we go along,
but yeah, they're wonderfully colored. Next picture shows a picture
of the scene across the street from the from the
Florida House. And this used to be part of the wall.
Now it's actually swung out over the road, hanging on
a piece of rebar right here. That's what earthquakes do.
Here's another picture of it, and it used to be
(15:41):
a very nice house with a very nice wall. You
can even see the the satellite dish over here. And
now it's rubble. Now it's rubble. But we got into
a we got into a school bus and we decided
we would make our way out to Leogan. You may
have seen the name Gressier, and that's where we were
(16:02):
actually sleeping.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Legon is where we were working.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
As we drove along, we drove along the highway or
the city streets, and this is the median of the
street between the two sides. It's about here, it's about
eight feet across, and you can see that this guy
has built a shelter that's about four by eight long.
And there's another one right next to it, about the
(16:25):
same size. These sprang up overnight after the earthquake because
they had to.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Sleep somewhere, and they sure work them to sleep in
the houses.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
We saw some of these that were actually four by
four boxes, but you have to sleep somewhere.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Over the next.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Several weeks, well, we got were ten cities as aid
and resources started coming in. And so there's one picture
of of a tent city. And here's another one. This
is actually out at Lagon, and you can see that
the scenery has changed a little bit. It's not urban
rubble anymore. It's not just broken stuff. But Lagan is
(17:05):
a city of about thirty thousand people and in theory,
about seventy five percent of the buildings were damaged, if
not destroyed, and so this population of this little town
is now living out there.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
Here's a picture of us on the bus.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
We had a twenty passenger school bus that took us
around and we spent a lot of time on it
because even though these two places we were actually about
seven miles apart, a little bit more than that, but.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
They were.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
It took at least half an hour to get from
one place to the other. Whenever we got in the bus.
Next picture is one of the Joy House. I told
you that we had a Florida house, and there's not
a state called Joy, but a major SOUTHERNPI in Arkansas.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Have has a couple in it who came down here saw.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
The situation way back in the nineties and said, what
our church ought to do with our nineteen thousand members
is we ought to start a home and we ought
to do something. We have all these kids on the street,
orphans get kicked out orphanages at the age of twelve
and they just live on the street.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
We were going to do is well to.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
See if we can get some of them and move
them into a house, train them, raise off as Christians,
and try to affect life as best we can. And
so they built the Joy House and it's a wonderful
place and a wonderful ministry.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
If you want to check it out.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Their website is Haitijoyhouse dot org and it's well worth
well worth your time.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Looking at this is us. We've arrived.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
We're debriefing or getting ready for our for our week.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
You can see there's six mileah three from Utah.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
And we met eight people who are also staying there
from Florida and Virginia all gonna be working on the
same project.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
And what we found out.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Was that we're gonna be building buildings, we're gonna be
building shelters, and so well, let's put down a hole
from it.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
And this is the gate. This is the gate.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
It's up on the top of the hill and you
can kind of see how steep that hill is.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Right.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
That's we called that bus or that truck the limo
because not only did it carry all of our stuff
to the work site, but also it led us. Well,
it was another way to get transport. And frankly, when
it's that hot, you don't really want to be sitting
in the bus, so you can sit on the back
and let the breeze blow through your hair. You see,
(19:39):
there's a big wall around the place. Every decent home
in Haiti has a wall around it because it's a
it's a dangerous place. But it is a big house
up on a hill. And the nice thing about that is,
since we are in a tropical paradise, it's got a
pretty good view. That's that's that big bay that you
saw in Haiti. Below blue building is tin roof wrapped
(20:04):
in blue tart and that is a church.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Now.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
The cool thing about this church.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Is that the walls are on hinges, and if you
get enough people, what you do is you just raise.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Up the back, and you get more people, you raise
up this side. And so you see that little building.
It's only about six rows deep.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
But they had four hundred people there at Easter. So
that's pretty great.
Speaker 4 (20:36):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
And so that is that's the church, and that's that's
a picture of the situation.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
But yeah, it is sort of a tropical paradise.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
This is Joe who runs the place, and our friend
Bert and you can go up on the roof and
see everything, and that's pretty fabulous. Spend a lot of
time up there in the off hours because it was wonderful.
In fact, the next picture shows you, well, you know,
you get these big dramatic tropical sunsets too, and so
it's not the worst place.
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Like I said, it is sort of a tropical paradise
in spite of all of his problems. One of the
problems is that it is up on top of the hill.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
And the hill is made of clay, and so you've
got the school bus and you've got the big white
limbo truck and if it rains.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
At all, all that clay just turns slick, and so
you've got to hike up.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
And you can get a pretty good idea of how
steep that is here in the next picture too. But
you got these big toolkits, you know, the two man
kind of toolkits, and you've got you know, five gallon
buckets of water, and all had to be carried up
because you can't leave it.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
On the truck overnight. So anyway, it was steep.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
That's where I got my big workout for the week.
But and we're gonna we're gonna come back to the
idea a little bit later. So the first night I arrived,
I asked if there's a church service we we could
go to. I left Boise.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
I think I got to the airport around six point
thirty on Saturday morning. We flew all Or, we flew
over to Miami.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
We spent the night on the floor in the Miami airport,
so we and then we flew to Port of Prince.
We missed church, and so I asked, is there an
evening service where we're gonna be? And yes, the Little
Blue Church is gonna have an evening service. And I
asked that question about a quarter to five, and I
found out the answer yes. And then about five minutes
(22:34):
later one of the guys came and said, so you
want to preach and I and now I told the Lord, yes,
I want to go and I want to do whatever
you want. But if you give me it, she has
to preach, I'm gonna take it. So I just want
you to know that, Father, And so here I have.
I got five minutes and okay, I'm preaching. And so
(22:57):
one of the other guys from Virginia was is it pastor?
And he looked at me and said, how can I help?
I said, okay, find these verses for me. I don't
know the references. If I don't have a concordance, help me
out here. And so we found the verses, and a
good portion of the sermon dealt with first Chronicles.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Sixteen that I read before that.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
The gods of the nations or idols, but our Lord
made the heavens, which means wherever heaven looks, God is
still God, and no idle or local God can handle it.
But then on top of that, it's not just places,
but it's also people. And so here I am I'm
looking at fifteen people I've never seen before and might
(23:42):
never see it again.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
But we're also in a spiritual kingdom.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
And as some of you already know, Colossian chapter one
has my favorite verses. God has delivered us from the
dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of
the Son he loves, Christ Jesus, in whom we have redemption,
the forgiveness of sins. And so you see, God's kingdom
is not an earthly kingdom that's measured in miles or
(24:08):
area or countrysides, but rather it is measured in the
people who come into His kingdom.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
And so I was able to say to them, it
doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
That I am from the US and you're from Haiti.
Your passport and mine both say Kingdom of the Son
He loves. And so it was great. We had a
good time, great singers collect That sounds a lot like Africa.
It was just a lot of fun and lots of
loud singing and clapping, and people were all smiles afterwards.
(24:40):
Here's a picture of a guy smiling. I think, yeah,
see that guy. He was there, he was smiling, And
that's right next to him is one of our lead translators.
His name is Matthew, and he's been with the joy
House family since he was twelve years old.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
He's in his.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Early twenties, mid twenties now and just a great guy.
And then down below in front of Matthew is the
dogs with barks and demons. Matthew told me he can
see demons and he'll bark at him. And sometime I
will tell you the full story about that, but we
(25:18):
don't have time tonight, although we if we do have.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Time to tell you. Okay, So what we're.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Gonna do is we found out we're gonna build building shelters.
We weren't gonna be just moving rubble. We were gonna
be building shelters. And this is a shelter. The materials
are provided by Samaritan's Purse. And what this is is
basically a tent with a tin roof. It's twelve by twelve,
(25:44):
twelve feet on the side. And what we did was
we built two by four walls.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
On thirty inch centers.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
Guys, no three foot centers, thirty six inch centers, so
in the US we'd use sixteen. But these are in
other words, every three foot there is a beam going up,
and that not a lot of snowload, that's right. And
then what you do is put a the front of
(26:14):
its eight feet tall. In the back of it and
the sides are seven feet tall. You put a tin
roof on it and that's enough of a pitch to
let the rain roll off. And then you wrap the
whole thing in a forty eight foot tart and and
nail the tarp to the to the studs. And that
doesn't sound like much, and frankly it's not.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
But it's enough for a family of eight people to
live in.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
And while it sounds like it's not much, we had
people lining up asking when they could get one, so
it's really really quite something. Oh and then we took Rebard,
drove it into the ground, wrapped it over one of
the bottom rails to try to hold it down when
the hurricane season starts, which actually started yesterday. And so
(27:04):
that's what we're gonna be working on.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
And the question for you is how do you do that?
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Well, let's keep going with our slides here. First thing
is you get up early in the morning and you
drive from you drive down to Laogan and Bienvenue.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
We're speaking French and Creole here, so welcome to Leogan.
And you've all been welcomed.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Now, and as you drive along, you're gonna turn off
the highway onto this dirt road, which is one of
the better dirt roads in the on the whole island,
I think, because it's reasonably flat. And you're gonna drive
through this community and you can see all sorts of
great stuff. We're talking banana trees over here, and all
sorts of mango trees, and this tiny little opening suddenly
(27:48):
it opens up into a big open area. And that's
where we did our staging. So slide number forty two. Hey,
look at that. That base is too big and ugly
for this purpose. But here we are, and I rode
in this day on the back of the truck. There's
a goat back here and well, and you can see
this house now uninhabitable.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
This was a two story house and now it's a
one story house.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
The goat was tied to a piece of rebarb I
don't know what the goat did.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
But he was in time out because it was no
food or water.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
Anyway, later on, later on I released him, and you know,
I said, because he was all wrapped up in this
little quarter around his neck and anyway, but that's more
than one to know. So we arrive here and then
we keep going.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
What do we do? Well, we get.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Together on the job site and we have a little
morning meeting. This is Cricket and Blaine Harden and they
are from Blackfoot and two of the hardest working people
you will ever want to meet.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Blaine is about your size.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Pastor, but he outweighs you buy twenty thirty pounds. And
this guy is muscle. He is an ox. And so
we did all sorts of things and he carried the burden.
You ought to be proud to have him in your convention.
So then what you do You unload the truck that's
got the equipment. This is another This is coming over
(29:20):
from Samaritan's Purse. They had a factory just down the
road turning turning wood into beams and into two by
fours and producing tarts and so then they sent this
over and so we unloaded. And this guy here, oh no,
that guy there is Russell Perry.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
He's from the church up in Cascade, phil Cross Church.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
And he's going to be sixty eight years old next month,
and he outworked everybody on the team.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
So there you go.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
So you unload everything, and then what do you do
in the next slide? You smile a little kids like Bico,
and then you a foundation of some sort.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
You try to level out the ground. You use the rubble.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
And you make things even and you turn it into
a foundation, or you break up pillars from the building
and try to get them out of the way and
so you can build something on top of it. Now,
I had them take this picture of me because I
wanted you to know for sure that I had done
(30:27):
something involving physical work while I was down there. This
is don Nez, but he's kind of laughing at me.
I'm not sure why. But no, no, it wasn't. It wasn't.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
I did this like all day or at least. Yeah,
that's right, we're apposed to be working on this pillar. No, actually,
this this was actually.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
At a church, at the Baptist Church, and the title
of it was the Church of the Great King was
the name of the church, which is.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
A great name of a church. Huh.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
But there are walls are all falling down except for
the ones over on this side over here, and so
they wanted us to break up the rubble and so
they'd be able to pour a new floor and start
building something new. Now they're meeting under a tent or
a tarp actually that they tie to the one wall
that's standing in the.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
Two little pieces of the wall they're still there.
Speaker 1 (31:25):
In fact, they told us that there were two columns
there were only half broken, and they.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Told us to leave them up so they could keep
tying things.
Speaker 1 (31:34):
To them and they could keep having church under the
tarp on Sunday because it gets pretty hot.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
We keep going.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
So what do you do after you've made a foundation.
You measure up wood, You make sure you're gonna put
your your nails in the right place, and then you
start nailing these things toged. Like I said, they're in
thirty six foot centers. So whether it's a seven foot
wall or eighth foot wall, you've got a beam here,
(32:02):
and then three beams that are set three feet apart,
and then you've got another beam here.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Five studs make up a troll foot wall.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
And those of you who are into construction are just
sort of grimacing right now. But this isn't designed to
be permanent shelter, but it's designed to be something that
will get them through the next year or two. Then
you stand these things up, put little gussets in the
walls here to hold them together, to threw them up
(32:32):
a little bit, and then you start then you start
hammering them and they go together. This guy uh this
next picture, Yeah, that's what I did. I held up walls.
And there's Russell again. You can see he's kicking something
around me. I'm holding up a wall.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Oh well, in fact, laughing and laughing. That's right.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
One day I was carrying one of these walls, because
you can't always build them where you're gonna set them up.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
You don't have room.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
So you have to build the wall and carry it
to wherever your site was gonna be. So I'm cruising
along and and one of the guys, one of the
the local guys behind me, asked, are you a pastor?
And I said yes and uh, and he said something
that to the other guys, and they all started laughing.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
And I'm not sure why, but I think it's good.
I think they were thinking this skinny guy is uh, Yeah,
he must.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Be a pastor, because he's not good for much. Here's
a view looking up. This guy is uh is standing
on the roof. He's getting ready to put some roofing on.
Just several several sheets of ten. Here's another view of it.
You get to see the bottom of his legs. But
these are bunk beds.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
And there's kind of a practical genius here.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
This is a piece of wood that is two feet
wide and twelve feet long. That's really enough bed for
two six foot people, right, and so right here we've
got bunks for six people. Plus you've got a ladder
that'll lets you get up on the roof. So an
(34:20):
incredibly simple but very well conceived design. There was also
a each house got a four by six bed, one
bed that a married couple could sleep in. But so
you've got your whole family of eight here in a
twelve x twelve room. Next slide shows us how it
looks when it's done, how it looks when it's half done,
(34:42):
and how it looks when it's still kind of in
the building process.
Speaker 2 (34:45):
That's three houses.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Together in a space that was twelve thirteen, fourteen, another twelve,
another two, and another twelve.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
So what does that come through thirty six that comes
to forty feet three.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
Yeah, every one of them had a dirt floor. Every
one of them was tied into the dirt to protect
against hurricanes, and every one of them was spoken for
before we even started building. If you ever think that
you don't have enough stuff, just remember this picture.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
Sometimes sometimes a tent with a tin roof is luxury.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
I don't know if any of you give to Samaritans first, Well,
I know the lots of us do at Christmas time
for Operation Christmas Shoebox the shoebox, but they're not just
a Christmas time thing they appreciate. In fact, I asked
them whether they had gotten shoe box.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Oh, yeah, we get shoeboxes. Well, well, we send shoe boxes.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
But one of our guys who was kind of leading
the team is a construction guy from Jacksonville, Florida. He's
got his own company, and he says that he figured
the materials cost four to six hundred dollars for each
one of these if you bought them in the States.
That's not a whole lot for a house, but it's
(36:17):
a whole lot of house if you've got nothing.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
That wasn't all we did.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
Here's Angie Polland she's from little town east of Twin Falls.
She's a registered nurses, so she went to.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Be our team medic.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
She also ended up doing a lot of things for
the for the locals. But when they found out that
she had band aids. You know, kids are with band aids, right,
except these kids had genuine wounds from.
Speaker 2 (36:51):
We We could never really figure out why.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
And so she was putting on a lot of anti
vacterial ointment and doing some serious that we wouldn't normally
think of. In fact, one afternoon, I got sick, a
little heat sick, and I just sat there with her,
and I was her nurse.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
And she would sit there, she look.
Speaker 1 (37:10):
At a wound or a condition and make some kind
of diagnosis, and and I'd hand her a gaze pad
or some tape or something, and she would dress the wound.
And she had as much business as she could handle.
We saw a chicken pox epidemic over there.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
We saw.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
All sorts of cuts and scrapes and everything completely uncared
for no soap.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Even if you have soap, the water is well, you're
not going.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
To drink it. Weird head skin disease thing. We didn't
even recognize.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
What it was. A boil. You know what a boil is.
It's like the world's largest z it.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
And I got to help lands one.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Let's hear it from being heat sick. But one thing
Angie did was she.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Brought bags of beads and she made bracelets for the kids.
How many of you know about the gospel bracelets? Everybody
here know what a gospel bracelet is. Oh, some people don't.
A gospel bracelet is. One of the most powerful things
in the world, is what a gospel bracelet is.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
So look up there you see the ones on the end.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
Are black and gold, and this represents the condition of
the universe. God is holy and mighty, and his majesty
is represented by the goal on the other end, all
the way separated, it's black, and that represents the condition
of humans. We are in sin, and the Bible says
(38:49):
that our hearts are black, and they're turned away from
Him and they are dirty, and we are separated from
Him by our sin.
Speaker 2 (38:58):
But God is not satisfied with that condition.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
He loves us, and so he gave his own son,
Jesus Christ, who died on the cross, and his red
blood covers our sin. He is He is a sacrifice
to take away the sin of the world, and everyone
who trusts him can have his black sin washed away
(39:22):
and made as white as snow. Now these people don't
have a concept of snow like we do. But they
know what snow looks like and they followed that. And
you can be washed as white as snow by the
blood of Jesus. It doesn't matter how dark your heart is.
You can be forgiven and cleaned. Then you're baptized, you
become part of the church, and you begin living with
(39:45):
the nation of believers.
Speaker 2 (39:47):
Like we talked about before, over time you're going to grow.
You're going to become more and more like Jesus.
Speaker 1 (39:54):
You're never going to become the Son of God, but
your character and your attitude and your life you're going
to become like Jesus as you grow.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
And eventually you're going to die. And we're all going
to die.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
And I don't need to tell any of you that,
especially if you're a bunch of patients who just saw
close to three hundred thousand people killed.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
We're all going to die.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
But when we die, we're going to be gloried with God.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
And that's a gospel bracelet.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
So she made these on Monday, and in fact, in
the next few pictures, I think, if I'm not mistaken, Yeah,
this little girl doesn't look too impressed, and neither one
of them, but you can see they got those bracelets right.
The next kids they are kind of impressed and they've
got their bracelets on.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
And so that was. That was on Monday.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
And on Tuesday I had a bracelet too.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
And on Tuesday I walked from one job site to another.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
We were actually doing things in a couple of little
family neighborhoods and I finished my job here and I
went over here and what should happen?
Speaker 2 (41:03):
But I'm just standing there, and Anna, who is from Virginia, says, Hi, Pastor,
you got a crowd. You're gonna preach? And I looked around.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
Hi, there were about fifteen people just standing around, and
I said, yeah, I guess I am.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
And so I just I just.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Took the little bracelet I was wearing and walked through
the presentation just like I told you.
Speaker 2 (41:28):
Sure, I preached it a little bit more, but that
was pretty much it.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
And at the end, I said, now, if you don't
if you don't know Jesus personally, if you would like
to experience what I've just talked about, just.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
Raise your hand and we'll go and talk about some more.
And two people raise their hand, and so.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
I took them off to the side with a translator
and went through it again make sure they understood the gospel.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
They did. I prayed with them.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
Then I took them down the road and introduced them
to the local pastor.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
And so that was a very very exciting moment. And
we turned around and.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
It was getting close to wrap up time, and so
we started, or I started back down the road and
heading for the truck. And that night I was told
that when we finished, and when we walked away, another
of the women who had been there went.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
Up to the pastor and said, I want to be
saved all from a little colored bracelet.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
So I imagine at some point those bracelets have been
made in a.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
Vacation Bible school sponsored by this church.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
Never underestimate the power of twenty five cents worth.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Of these in the hands of God. So now that
was on Tuesday.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
On Monday, another guy had been led to the Lord,
kind of a guy who's about twenty and the guy
had used an avanjacube. Does everybody here know what an
evangecube is. I'm going to be preaching for pastor in
a couple of weeks. I have a suspicion I'll show
you in a van cube then, But basically it looks
like a Rubik's cube, but as you move the pieces.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
Around and tells the gospel story.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
And this other pastor from Virginia had done that, and
he had led this.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
Guy named Nelson's the Lord.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
And that was on Monday, and then I had done
my presentation on Tuesday. On Wednesday, a guy brings me
in a vancube and I show it, and no reaction
at all, nobody's interested. But then even as that crowd
has just starting to disperse, Nelson shows up and he's
got a hold of in a vanjcube, and with him
(43:37):
he's dragging his friend Franz, which is.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
Of course, you know, a good Haitian name Franz. Franz
a big guy.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
And Nelson tells me passa davy, show my friend. And
I tell him, no, you show your friend so I
can't do it.
Speaker 2 (44:01):
I tell it, I'll move it.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
You tell him, so I opened it, showed the first scene,
Nelson tells Franz. Second scene. Nelson tells trans Thursday, we
go all the way through it. And then I say
to Franz, do you want to accept Christ? He says yes, great,
big serious guy, yes, And so again I talked him
(44:26):
through make sure he understood what he was doing.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
We prayed together, and Franz was never again on the
work side. He's a working guy.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
He's he's actually rides a motorcycle.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
At the taxi driver. How many people can you fit
onto a motorcycle, that's a question. I've seen five.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
But but whenever I would see him passing, driving by
or whatever, I said, Hey, Bronz, and he give me
the biggest smile. This this guy, this guy's demeanor changed
when he came from No Christ. And so there were
these five people that came to the Lord that we
know of, very directly through the ministry that you guys
(45:13):
sent down. And there were reports of Nelson taking as
the banjeque and then showing whoever he could show it.
So we don't know what kind of ritual that started.
And so so it was great and God is good,
and we are we're praising the Lord for that, we
really are. Now. Before I went down, somebody said, Haiti,
(45:34):
isn't that the voodoo place? And the answer is yes,
So what about voodoo? Have you ever heard of voodoo?
Voodoo is basically African religion. In the seventeenth century, the
French ruled the island, and they brought slaves over from
Africa to rule the or to Uh to work the plantations,
(45:55):
and they brought with them their African Spiritists religion where
they are afraid of demons and they placate the demons
and they.
Speaker 2 (46:08):
Worshiped the spirits. Now to that, of course, the French
were Catholic and that was the official religion.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
And so what they did they kind of kept this
African religion and then they put this veneer of Catholicism
on top of it. So they're very big on Mary,
and they'll have a cross and things. But it's African.
Speaker 2 (46:30):
Religion with Christian pictures more or less.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
So one day we went we visited a voodoo temple
that had been destroyed in the earthquake.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
You're not supposed to take pictures of these things.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
You can because if I take your picture, I can
control your spirit.
Speaker 2 (46:50):
But hey, it's all ruined. There was nobody there. I
took a picture inside it.
Speaker 1 (46:57):
You'll see paintings on the walls that, gee, there's a
cross there. Well, it's actually more like a grave, and
it's got a snake on it. And you got the crossbones,
and look, you've got cards because they tell fortunes.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
With cards, and this is in their.
Speaker 1 (47:19):
Their worship center in effect, and each of the walls
had a different picture painted on it.
Speaker 2 (47:26):
This one that I also have another.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
One of kind of a mermaid holding a knife and
fighting a sea serpent.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
It looks like that they're very big on snakes. Next picture.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
I don't know if you can tell what I've got here,
but basically it's a tree and then you can see this.
Speaker 2 (47:44):
What's this horns? Yeah. One thing that you do in
Haiti is you can actually.
Speaker 1 (47:53):
Pronounce a curse on someone. Or in Vudu, and you
can pronounce a curse and then what you do is
you slaughter an animal and you bind its horns to
the tree, and in doing so, you are figuratively binding.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
The curse on the person that you have just cursed.
Speaker 1 (48:14):
And it's a dark and scary thing. And so I thought, well,
what is what's the difference between Christianity and and voodoo. Oh,
we use the same word. Bunju is the name for God.
(48:34):
It's kind of a corruption of French. It means the
good Lord or the good God balm jew. But we
run against Bunju. Well, in Christianity, he is our father.
In Voodoo, he is an impersonal creator who just sort
of represents the universe. In Christianity, we know Christ is
our savior. They have no concept. Instead, they are worried
(49:00):
about the loa, the spirits who are to.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
Be contacted and appeased.
Speaker 1 (49:05):
You make sacrifices to them, and you pray to them,
and you honor them in these ceremonies.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
We know that the Holy Spirit dwells in us. That's
the promise of God.
Speaker 1 (49:15):
The LaaS possess those who believe in voodoo, and they
aspire to demon possession.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
God desires to save us. The Laa's help were deceived
depending on what they want to do, depending on whether
they are appeased or offended.
Speaker 1 (49:36):
God's plan for us is that we should do good,
and that's that's what the Bible said. We are created
for good works in Christ Jesus, what God has prepared
and advanced for us to do. In Voodoo, believers are
to be generous in their community, but they also cast
spells and they angle for power and and a lot
(49:59):
of the power the voodoo priestess is whether or not
she can manipulate the spirits, whether she can cause harm
to come on you.
Speaker 2 (50:12):
If she can, then she's powerful. If she can't, then
she's not that powerful.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
After the earthquake, there was a little voodoo place down
the hill from the from the Joy House, and the
priestess became a believer and they in the course of
the conversation, she said, the evil spirits just aren't here anymore.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
I can't contact him, and she turned to Christ.
Speaker 1 (50:44):
And that was our prayer through the course of the
through the course of the week.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
There was a full moon last week. I don't know
if you noticed it. It was okay here probably.
Speaker 1 (50:55):
I got the great, big, fat tropical coming up over
the mountains, full moon, and it was great. But full
moontime is the height of the voodoo religion. And our
prayer that night we were up on the roof there.
We were looking at how beautiful it was, but knowing
how dark it was.
Speaker 2 (51:15):
And our prayer that night was that whoever was in
those little voodoo.
Speaker 1 (51:19):
Temples around us, we look around at midnight at the
peak of the powers and.
Speaker 2 (51:23):
Just say, man, there's nothing going on here. Where's all
the power? Tonight? They'd wake up tomorrow morning saying that's
a waste of time.
Speaker 1 (51:34):
And we had a great prayer time. I'll tell you
about it sometime, not tonight. But this is the difference.
Voodoo is a dark and scary religion, and it's about
spirits and who's in power. But God has not given
(51:54):
us the spirit of fear, but of power and love
and self control.
Speaker 2 (52:00):
Amen. It's a whole different thing. So as we go
on down, what do we see.
Speaker 1 (52:07):
Christianity is a religion of grace, it's it's it's a
religion of smiles.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
It's a religion of people working together.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
It's it's a it's a religion of people traveling three
thousand miles to wear bright yellow shirts and sweat their
everything out and uh and do it joyfully. Why well,
because God placed us there, and we had a saying
on the team, right here, right now, where do you
(52:36):
want to be?
Speaker 2 (52:37):
Right here? Right now? This is the place God's calling
me to be.
Speaker 1 (52:41):
And and if one person on the team said right here,
everybody else come back and say, right now, this is
where God.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
Wants us to be. Here, we are, and we are.
Speaker 1 (52:50):
Here's Angie hugging on a little girl she made a
bracelet for over there. That's that's Dale, the incident commander
from Kentucky.
Speaker 2 (52:59):
Translator. Over on side, there's me looking kind of worse
for wear.
Speaker 1 (53:03):
The guy in the yellow shirt, the light yellow shirt,
is the translator. Then the guy in the in the
red shirt is a pastor and a real nice guy.
I only knew him for about five minutes, a real
nice guy. And let's go to the next slide. Well,
this is his church. You can see that at one
(53:24):
time it had a pretty nice foundation. Here in the earthquake,
it all fell down.
Speaker 2 (53:31):
He had a school going and it fell down all
there was.
Speaker 1 (53:38):
To it, and the church cleaned off the slab. Somehow
got a hold of a tent and said schools in session,
churches in session. There are two hundred and six kids
at this school now they're the ones you see. And
(53:58):
then over here on the side there's a there's a
building that didn't fall down, and there are three classrooms
of older kids there. But as I was talking to
this guy, I couldn't help but wondering if my church
was if my building was completely destroyed in a earthquake
and I lost everything, how soon.
Speaker 2 (54:17):
Would I be back in the ministry. How soon would
it take me to do that? You see this is
and you know what I decided, I decided I'd get back.
Speaker 1 (54:26):
On it because Christ gives us the power to do it.
Speaker 2 (54:33):
And He isn't just doing this because he's got to
do something. It's because in Christ we take care of people.
And that's the difference between Christianity and voodoo. Voodoo is
about taking care of your own.
Speaker 1 (54:49):
Christianity says God took care of me, and I'm gonna
take care of you too.
Speaker 2 (54:55):
So this guy here was.
Speaker 1 (54:59):
The paid triarch of this little village of six or
seven little families, his kids and their kids.
Speaker 2 (55:08):
And why do we go well, Because after.
Speaker 1 (55:14):
A ten day trip, we had built twenty homes enough
to house two hundred and forty people, keep him out
of the hurricanes.
Speaker 2 (55:25):
And we had given guys like this guy the chance
of new life, not just.
Speaker 1 (55:30):
New physical life, but new spiritual life. And it was good,
It was really good. I don't know his name, but
it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. We ministered to him.
As you know, we chose this is our theme for
(55:51):
the week. We were down for nine days. There are
nine fruit of the spirit, and.
Speaker 2 (55:58):
Each day we worked our way through.
Speaker 1 (56:02):
Today God is telling us and enabling us to love
each other. Today God is telling us, enabling us to
be joyful with each other and love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness,
and self control. Each day we worked through those things
and we prayed them together, and back here in the
(56:22):
States and in Hong Kong and in England.
Speaker 2 (56:26):
People were praying that we would have.
Speaker 1 (56:28):
Those things and God did great things. So again, I
want to thank you for letting me go, for helping
me go and would have it wouldn't have been the
same experience without you backing me up, and knowing that
you were here backing me up made it that much
easier for me to go and be there serving for you.
Speaker 2 (56:52):
So thanks, appreciate it. Now I've talked for an hour.
Speaker 1 (56:59):
Do you have any questions anything that you'd like more
information about.
Speaker 2 (57:05):
How hot was it?
Speaker 1 (57:08):
You know, on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, everybody was telling us, oh,
the weather is so lovely, thank you for bringing with you.
And it was overcast and there was a cool front end.
And on Wednesday, by noon I had heat stroke or
heat whatever it was.
Speaker 2 (57:30):
It was that hot.
Speaker 1 (57:32):
It was so hot that when it started raining, we
didn't worry about trying to get out of the rain.
We just kept working in it and letting ourselves get cooled.
Speaker 2 (57:40):
Down a little bit.
Speaker 1 (57:43):
I'll tell you what, after you've worked all day, sweating
and getting rained on in the dirt, and you come
back to the house smelling like a camel. But it
was hot. It was hot, and there were bugs and
bites and all sorts of things. But God was good
to us, and nobody fell apart.
Speaker 2 (58:05):
Did you eat anything? Did I eat anything unidentifiable?
Speaker 1 (58:11):
No?
Speaker 2 (58:12):
I didn't know what it was, but other people did.
Speaker 1 (58:14):
Every morning we had for breakfast scrambled and now there's
seventeen of us, so it's a pretty big container. We
had scrambled eggs with spam.
Speaker 2 (58:26):
It was a.
Speaker 1 (58:27):
Scrambled egg spam omelet. I guess they had covered with
some velveta.
Speaker 2 (58:38):
And Lord bless them.
Speaker 1 (58:39):
I know those cooks were doing their best, but it
wasn't very good.
Speaker 2 (58:44):
But at night we had all sorts of.
Speaker 1 (58:46):
Good stuff, and we had we had chicken, and we
had black beans and rice, and we had spaghetti with
hot dogs in it. But oh yes, And and we
had our choice of fruit every day. That was mango
(59:06):
or pineapple, or watermelon or bananas. And it was all good.
If you like fruit. That would be a very good
place for you to go, minister.
Speaker 2 (59:16):
And yeah that was of course, I had a cliff
bar for lunch every day. But you know that's not
so bad. What else, how do you get do you just?
(59:37):
How do you get involved in disastery? How did you?
Speaker 1 (59:42):
You know?
Speaker 3 (59:42):
What?
Speaker 2 (59:43):
Our what's that? That's right? Our our convention sponsors.
Speaker 4 (59:52):
Teams and and every couple of months they'll send out
an email there's gonna be a training session and if
you'd like to get involved, you just have to order
the training session.
Speaker 2 (01:00:02):
You just you just volunteered to do it.
Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
And in fact, the weekend before I went and I
drove back to Idaho Falls for a training session because
my certificate had lapsed, of course, but it was if
you want to go, there's some basic things you need
to know.
Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
But then you're on your way.
Speaker 1 (01:00:26):
Yeah, what's the industry there? We couldn't figure it out.
Although they move a lot of sugarcane, and girls, fresh sugarcane.
Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
Is really good. Boys, it's good.
Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
It's like eating candy on a steak. Yeah, really good.
But other than that, there really wasn't a whole lot
of industry that we saw in.
Speaker 2 (01:00:50):
This little village.
Speaker 1 (01:00:51):
This you know, you could see that I was working
in the banana trees and under the mango trees, and
people seem to be eating a lot of those people.
Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
People will raise chickens or.
Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
Pigs or goats, but it's very much kind of a
subsistence level work right there, kind of like going out
your house, get some chickens, and.
Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
Is it work to support that?
Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
People go to work as motorcycle taxi drivers and we
did see five people on a motorcycle one day, and
now admittedly two of them were pretty small, but.
Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
I've never tried it. So is Sarah's a lot of
starting to come back and they can support them, so
overs it's still a lot of just relief.
Speaker 1 (01:01:42):
It Well, Southern Baptists have this program called Buckets of Hope,
five gallon bucket that you can put, you know, a
particular list of food in and and ship it down there.
(01:02:03):
And there are hundreds of thousands of these buckets piled
up on the on the docks because the.
Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
Government has not seen fit to let it in. Very corrupt.
Speaker 1 (01:02:12):
From what we hear, nobody will actually sign a paper
unless they get paid to do it. And I guess
no one has found the right person or is willing
to bribe the right person to sign it.
Speaker 2 (01:02:25):
And so really they're still pretty much living on their own.
Speaker 1 (01:02:29):
They're eating their mangoes and bananas, and that might not
be true everywhere.
Speaker 2 (01:02:34):
But it's true right there. M kind of short, yeah,
and you know, and we could be wrong. Maybe it's
just they're being quarantined.
Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
Until they're sure they're no bugs coming into the country
or something, but that that seems to be the local
popular idea, that that they're never going to see the
food until somebody pays a bribe.
Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
Get said about the Samarians.
Speaker 3 (01:03:02):
First, one of the things you can is Southern Battis
we do the relief work right across them.
Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
Would tell you that they can't.
Speaker 3 (01:03:11):
Function about Southern Baptists because they we provide the workers
and the vehicles can do all the food.
Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
And then but Samarians first, if you want to give
to that, we get a.
Speaker 3 (01:03:23):
Christmas catalog and you can buy we want by boards
this year and so, and.
Speaker 2 (01:03:31):
That helps them. They'll they'll send them wherever they're gonna go,
and that gives them a job.
Speaker 3 (01:03:36):
They can sell the the bee the b boards and
and so b board helps produce the bees and then
they sell.
Speaker 2 (01:03:43):
That that's how they make a living. Or you can
buy gold's change.
Speaker 3 (01:03:46):
There's a lot of things you can do through Samaritans first,
because they get into places that you know, our stuff
might got to die. But the Samaritan's person does have
the capability of getting into places we might not.
Speaker 4 (01:03:59):
So there are a.
Speaker 2 (01:03:59):
Lot pass you through that and Haiti they have a
factory that turns out these things.
Speaker 3 (01:04:08):
So but if you want to spare it, the first
website you could buy probably buy boards or tart or.
Speaker 2 (01:04:16):
It's incredible things that I do to help you.
Speaker 1 (01:04:20):
You know, you might not have six hundred dollars to
buy a house. I like, yeah, but but any person
here could buy a wall or a tart or, and
we as a church certainly could.
Speaker 2 (01:04:36):
That wouldn't be much for a problem. Well I'm not.
Speaker 1 (01:04:47):
I mean, I'm going to be around off and on,
but I would love to talk to you if you
have questions about it. It was quite an experience move.
But let me dis close with this thought. Okay, there
is not a guy in this room that could not
go down and build these houses. We weren't using any
(01:05:11):
special skills that that we don't use at work day
at University of Baptist Church. Somebody's got to hold the wall,
(01:05:32):
and and that that's not just for the guys, it's
for the ladies to If we wanted to take a
week off and go down there together, it's like you know,
UBC mission trip. We could do it and and you
guys could do exactly what I did all week, and
you could have all the blessings I had if you're
(01:05:53):
working in the the power and the calling of the Lord.
So don't think that this is about some great mystical thing.
It's about willingness to go and listen to the voice
of God. So blessings on each one of you.
Speaker 2 (01:06:12):
Pastor
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